Armodoxy for Today: Valuables and the Value of Community

In the aftermath of the Los Angeles fires, stories of human suffering surface in different forms. From the outside they can be graded on scales of intensity. From the inside, that is, for someone experiencing suffering, loss is loss, pain is pain.

I spoke with a man who had lost everything. His house was incinerated by the fast moving flames in an Altadena neighborhood. He and his wife, and their kids were living in a temporary shelter when we spoke, awaiting authorization to move into a rental. He was in surprisingly good spirits considering his great loss. He was thankful for his friends and his church who had called him out of concern. He broke down as he expressed his good fortune in having a community around him. We discussed his needs. He was thankful that he was insured and felt the reconstruction process might take long but he felt it was manageable and would happen. He had hope and faith in the system.

He said, “I’m fine. The losses I suffered are all replaceable. I’m very thankful that we are all together and our losses were only physical items,” repeating, “they are all replaceable.”

“But my spirit is hurting. Emotionally, I’m not well,” as he broke down a second time during our conversation.

I asked if I could help. He thanked me but said that heart was broken because all the beautiful memorabilia from his dad – every tangible thing his dad had given him – had been destroyed. These memories were gone, never to be seen again, and therefore they were now priceless.

The Gospel records that one day Jesus sat opposite the treasury and saw how the people put money into the treasury. Many who were well to do, put in much and along came a poor widow came and threw in a couple of pennies. He told his disciples that the widow had put in more into the treasury than all the others, “For they all put in out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all that she had, her whole livelihood.” (Mark 12:41-44)

The small offering of the widow was great. The small trinkets and articles a father had left to a man who survived the fire, were the greatest loss he suffered.

The fires that sprung up around Los Angeles gave everyone much to think about and learn. Life is fragile. Life is temporary. Preparedness for the unexpected is important. You can never be completely prepared. Loss of property is tragic but not as tragic as the end of life. And today’s lesson that value is not intrinsically assigned to items but defined by our memories and love.

The greatest message that reverberates in me is that of the importance of community. People came together. Neighbors discovered one another. Uber and Lyft gave free rides, AirbnB offered houses, Holiday Inn accepted pets, several restaurants offered food. The greatest mission of the Church is to create that community where the love of Christ is manifest in our daily encounters and outreach. It is the community – people coming together hand in hand – that will and can address the problems of this world.

On this weekend where we celebrate the legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. we remember that he envisioned a community, what he called the “Beloved Community,” where love, justice, and solidarity would prevail.  I leave you with one of his stirring prophecies about the importance of harmony within our global community when he said, ” We must either learn to live together as brothers or we are all going to perish together as fools.”